The Doll (108 page)

First, though, I must regain my strength. I still have no appetite, I'm growing thin, sleep badly, although all day long I am drowsy. I have dizzy spells, my heart beats so … Ah well, it will all pass.

Klein is beginning to neglect himself too. He comes to work late, carries pamphlets, goes to meetings with goodness knows whom … But, worse still, he has already taken a thousand roubles of the money intended for him by Wokulski, and spent them in one day. What on?

Despite this, he is a good lad. And the best test of his honesty is the fact that even Baroness Krzeszowska hasn't thrown him out of her house, where he lives on the third floor, as he used to, always quiet, never disturbing people.

If only he would extricate himself from those unnecessary social contacts: for though there may not be trouble with the Jews, yet with them it's a different story … May the Lord bless and protect him!

Klein has told me an amusing and instructive tale. I laughed till the tears came, and at the same time I gained still more evidence of God's justice, though in a small way. ‘Brief is the triumph of the ungodly,' says the Bible, or some Father of the Church. Whoever said it, sentence has come to pass on both the Baroness and Maruszewicz, for sure.

Everyone knows that once the Baroness had rid herself of Maleski and Patkiewicz, she told the janitor not under any circumstances to rent the apartment on the third floor to students, even if it had to stand empty. In fact, the students' rooms were not rented for several months, but at least the Baroness was pleased.

In the meantime, her husband the Baron went back to her and he, of course, took over control of the apartment house. And since the Baron continually needs money, he was strongly tempted by that empty apartment despite the Baroness's prohibition, which lessened their income by a hundred and twenty roubles a year. Above all, however, it was Maruszewicz (they have already been reconciled!), who is continually borrowing money from Krzeszowski, who egged him on: ‘Why, Baron,' he sometimes asked him, ‘should you check whether an applicant for the apartment is, or is not, a student? Why all this fuss? Providing he don't come in uniform, then he's not a student; and if he pays a month in advance, then take it, and be quits!'

The Baron took this advice very much to heart; he even told the janitor that if a tenant were to show up, to send him in without asking questions. Of course the janitor told his wife this, and his wife told Klein, who felt like acquiring neighbours best suited to his own taste.

So, a few days after these orders were given, an elegant young man appeared at the Baron's, with a strange countenance, and still more strangely dressed; his trousers didn't match his waistcoat, his waistcoat didn't match his coat, and his tie didn't match anything.

‘There's a room in your house for rent to a single gent, Baron,' said the dandy, ‘at ten roubles a month?'

‘Yes, there is,' says the Baron, ‘you may look at it.'

‘Oh, that isn't necessary. I am certain that Your Excellency wouldn't rent a bad apartment. May I pay a deposit?'

‘Pray do,' says the Baron, ‘and, because you take my word for it, I won't ask you for any references.'

‘As Your Excellency wishes …'

‘Mutual confidence is enough between well-bred people,' replied the Baron, ‘I hope, therefore, that neither my wife nor I — but especially my wife — will have cause to complain about you gentlemen.'

The young man pressed his hand fervently. ‘I give you my word,' he said, ‘that we shall never cause any bother to your wife who, perhaps unjustly, has been prejudiced …'

‘Enough, enough!' the Baron interrupted. He took the deposit and gave a receipt.

When the young man had gone, the Baron summoned Maruszewicz. ‘I don't know,' said the Baron anxiously, ‘whether we haven't committed a folly … I have a tenant now, but judging from the description, I'm afraid he is one of the young men my wife drove out.'

‘Never mind,' Maruszewicz replied, ‘providing they've paid in advance.'

Next morning three young men moved into the apartment, but so quietly that no one saw them. No one even noticed that they held sessions with Klein in the evenings. However a few days later, Maruszewicz — very vexed — rushed to the Baron, exclaiming: ‘Do you know, Baron, that they are precisely those scoundrels the Baroness threw out? Maleski, Patkiewicz …'

‘Never mind,' replies the Baron, ‘they won't vex my wife, providing they've paid in advance.'

‘But they're vexing me!' Maruszewicz burst out. ‘If I open a window, one of them shoots peas at me through a pea-shooter, which isn't at all agreeable. And when a few people visit me, or one of the ladies (he added more quietly) they drum on the windows with peas, so it's impossible to sit there … They interfere with me … They compromise me … I shall go to the police station, and complain!'

Naturally the Baron told his lodgers this, and begged them not to shoot peas at Maruszewicz's windows. They ceased, but for all that, whenever Maruszewicz received any lady in his apartment, which happened rather often, one of the lads at once leant out of the window, and bawled: ‘Janitor! Janitor! Do you know who the lady is, who went to see Mr Maruszewicz?'

Of course, the janitor doesn't even know that a woman went there, but after such questions the entire apartment house is informed of the fact. Maruszewicz is furious with them, the more so as the Baron's reply to his complaints was: ‘You yourself advised me not to keep the apartment empty.'

And the Baroness is grown humble, because on the one hand she fears her husband, and on the other — the students. In this way, the Baroness and Maruszewicz are being punished for her malice and spite, and for his intrigues, by one and the same instrument, while honest Klein has the company he wanted.

Yes, there is justice in the world!

That Maruszewicz is shameless, upon my word! Today he hurried to Szlangbaum with a complaint about Klein. ‘Sir,' he said, ‘one of your clerks, who lives in Baroness Krzeszowska's house, is quite simply compromising me.'

‘How is he compromising you, sir?' asked Szlangbaum, opening his eyes wide.

‘He visits with those students whose windows look out on the yard. And, sir, they stare into my windows, shoot peas at me, and if several persons gather, they shout that there's a card-sharping school in my apartment.'

‘Mr Klein will not be working for me after July,' replied Szlangbaum, ‘you'd better speak to Mr Rzecki, they've known one another longest.'

Maruszewicz called on me in turn, and again told his story of the students who call him a card-sharp or compromise ladies visiting him. ‘Fine ladies!' thought I, while I replied aloud, ‘Mr Klein is in the store all day, so he cannot be responsible for his friends.'

‘Yes, but Mr Klein has some secret understanding with them; he persuaded them to move back into the house; he visits them and receives them in his apartment.'

‘A young man,' I replied, ‘naturally prefers to keep company with other young men.'

‘But I don't want to suffer on that account! Let him keep them quiet … Or I'll start a court case against them all.'

What a hope — that Klein should pacify the students, or unite them in sympathy for Maruszewicz! However, I warned Klein and added that it would be very unpleasant if he, a clerk of Wokulski's, were to have a court case involving students' antics. Klein heard me out, then shrugged. ‘What's it to do with me?' he replied, ‘I might hang such a scoundrel, but I don't shoot peas at his windows, or call him a card-sharp. What are his card parties to me?'

He was right. So I didn't say another word.

I must be off … away! If only Klein doesn't get mixed up in some foolishness. It's terrible how childish they are; they'd like to rebuild the world, but at the same time they perform such silly antics.

Either I am quite mistaken, or we are on the eve of extraordinary events. One day in May, Wokulski travelled with Mr and Miss Łęcki to Cracow, and told me clearly that he didn't know when he would be back — perhaps not for a month.

Yet he returned, not within a month, but on the very next day, so wretched-looking that he was pitiful to see. It was terrible to see what had come over this man in the course of twenty-four hours. When I asked him what had happened, and why he'd come back, he first of all hesitated, then said he'd received a telegram from Suzin and was leaving for Moscow. But within the next twenty-four hours he changed his mind and declared he wasn't going.

‘But if it's important business?' I asked.

‘May the devil take business,' he muttered and shrugged.

Now he doesn't leave his house for whole days at a time, and for the most part he lies down. I visited him, but he received me irritably; I learned from the butler that he refuses to see anyone. I sent Szuman to him, but Staś wouldn't even talk to Szuman, and merely told him he needed no doctors. This didn't satisfy Szuman; as he is something of a busybody he began inquiries on his own account, and learned strange things.

He said that Wokulski had left the train around midnight, at Skierniewice, pretending he'd received a telegram, that afterwards he'd disappeared from the station and didn't return until dawn, covered with mud, apparently tipsy. At the station, they think he got drunk and spent the night in a field. This explanation didn't convince either Szuman or me. The doctor declares that Staś must have broken with Miss Łécka, and perhaps even attempted something preposterous … But I think he really did have a telegram from Suzin. In any case, I must travel for my health's sake. I am not yet an invalid, and cannot renounce my future on account of a temporary enfeeblement.

Mraczewski is here and is staying with me. The lad looks like a Bernardine Father, has grown manly, sunburnt, plump. And how much of the world he's seen in the last few months! He went to Paris, then Lyons; from Lyons he went to Częstochowa, to Mrs Stawska, and they came to Warsaw together. Then he took her back to Częstochowa, stayed a week and apparently helped her arrange the store. Then he went to Moscow, from where he returned to Częstochowa and Mrs Stawska, stayed a while and at present is with me.

Mraczewski declares that Suzin did not telegraph to Wokulski, and in addition he is certain that Wokulski has broken with Miss Łęcka. He must even have said something to Mrs Stawska, since that angelic woman, while in Warsaw a few weeks ago, was kind enough to visit me and inquire very sincerely about Staś: ‘Is he well? Is he very changed and sad? Will he never recover from his despair?'

Despair? Even if he's broken with Miss Łęcka, thank God there are still plenty of other women, and if he wants to, Staś could marry Mrs Stawska. A priceless little woman, how she loved him — and who knows whether she still does? Good God, I'd be delighted if Staś were to go back to her. So pretty, so noble, so much devotion … If there is still any order in the world (which I sometimes doubt), then Wokulski ought to marry Mrs Stawska. But he must make haste, for unless I am very much mistaken, Mraczewski is starting to think of her. ‘Sir,' he sometimes says to me, wringing his hands, ‘what a woman, what a woman! If it weren't for her unfortunate husband, I'd have proposed to her already.'

‘But would she accept you?'

‘I don't know …' he sighed.

He sank into a chair so that it trembled, and said: ‘When I met her the first time after her departure from Warsaw, it was as though I'd been struck by lightning, I liked her so …'

‘Well, and she made an impression on you even earlier.'

‘But not of this sort. After travelling from Paris to Czestochowa, I was drowsy, but she looked so pale, with such sad eyes, that I immediately thought: suppose I succeed? So I tried flirting with her. But she rejected me after the first words, and when I fell on my knees to her and swore I loved her — she burst into tears! Ah, Ignacy, those tears … I lost my head entirely … If the devil would take her husband once and for all, or if I had the money for a divorce … Ignacy! After a week of living with this woman, I'd either die or take to my bed. Yes, sir … Only today do I feel how much I love her.'

‘But suppose she is in love with somebody else?' I asked.

‘With whom? Wokulski, may be? Ha! Ha! … Who would fall in love with that gruff old bear? … A woman needs to be shown feelings, passions, to be spoken to of love, to have her hands pressed, and if possible, also … But could that lump of clay do anything of the kind? He made up to Izabela like a pointer to a duck, because he thought he would enter into contact with the aristocracy and that the young lady had a dowry. But when he saw how things were, he ran away from her at Skierniewice. Oh sir, one can't treat women so!'

I admit I don't care for Mraczewski's raptures. When he starts hurling himself at her feet, whining, sobbing, then in the end he'll turn Mrs Stawska's head. And Wokulski may regret it, because — on my word of honour as an ex-officer — she was the only woman for him.

But let us wait, and in the meantime — be off!

Brr! So I left. I bought a ticket to Cracow, got into the train at the Warsaw—Vienna railroad station and then, after the third departure bell had rung, I jumped out again. I can't leave Warsaw and the store even for a little while. I got my luggage back from the railroad on the next day, it had gone as far as Piotrków. If all my plans go like this, I must congratulate myself.

L
YING
or sitting in his room, Wokulski mechanically recalled his return from Skierniewice to Warsaw. Around five that morning, he had bought a first-class ticket at the railroad station, though he was uncertain whether he had asked for it or whether it had been given to him without his asking. Then he got into a second-class compartment, and there he found a priest, who looked out of the window for the entire journey, also a red-haired German who took off his spats and slept like a log, with his feet (in dirty socks) on the opposite seat. Finally, facing him, had been an old lady, who had such a bad toothache that she didn't even object to the behaviour of her neighbour in the socks.